There were places where the narrow gauge made pretty good time, express time for the period. I can show you timetables for the North Pacific Coast that call for 39 miles per hour schedules around 1890. That was a short burst over about a three mile stretch. Then in 1899 NPC acquired the largest narrow gauge locomotive in the world, at that time, to head the San Rafael Express train. It did not run that fast regularly, but it did cover the road in the same terminal to terminal time that the 1875 Baldwin 4-4-0's had helped by that short burst.